Carry autism awareness on your shoulder

Online handbag company Urban Junket is offering a stylish way to commemorate Autism Awareness Month during April—by shopping for a new purse.

The web site is collaborating with Jackie Cousins, age 30, an artist and animator with autism. She is affiliated with Project Onward, a Bridgeport-based non-profit art gallery featuring and selling the works of juried artists with mental disabilities (projectonward.org).

Cousins, who graduated from the Illinois Institute of Art, created several illustrations featuring Urban Junket’s bags, which are made with recycled materials. Through April, Urban Junket is displaying the illustrations and donating 10 percent of sales of any of its bags, in any shade of blue—the color of autism awareness—to Project Onward.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reported that autism rates climbed nearly 30 percent between 2008 and 2010. It was estimated to affect one of every 68 8-year-olds, up from one in 88 just two years earlier.

Cousins said she joined the national Light It Up Blue Campaign to shine a light on autism and the underlying abilities of those with dealing with it.

“I feel great about doing this partnership with Urban Junket, because it’s an opportunity to get myself out there,” Cousins said. “It’s important for me to show people what I’m all about.”

“We have to stop looking at this as a deficit rather than differences,” said Genevieve Thornton, a clinical psychologist and owner of SociAbility, a private therapeutic practice in Northbrook that serves children and adults with autism spectrum disorders.

“It will behoove all of us to look at the specific strengths these people have,” she said. “They can with the right help be successful.”